It is the fashion to call every story controversial that deals with

times when controversy or a war of religion was raging; but it

should be remembered that there are some which only attempt to

portray human feelings as affected by the events that such warfare

occasioned. 'Old Mortality' and 'Woodstock' are not controversial

tales, and the 'Chaplet of Pearls' is so quite as little. It only

aims at drawing certain scenes and certain characters as the

convulsions of the sixteenth century may have affected them, and

is, in fact, like all historical romance, the shaping of the

conceptions that the imagination must necessarily form when

dwelling upon the records of history.

That faculty which might be

called the passive fancy, and might almost be described in Portia's

song, -'It is engendered in the eyes,

By READING fed - and there it dies,'-that faculty, I say, has learnt to feed upon character and

incident, and to require that the latter should be effective and

exciting. Is it not reasonable to seek for this in the days when

such things were not infrequent, and did not imply exceptional

wickedness or misfortune in those engaged in them? This seems to

me one plea for historical novel, to which I would add the

opportunity that it gives for study of the times and delineation of

characters. Shakespeare's Henry IV. and Henry V., Scott's Louis

XI., Manzoni's Federigo Borromeo, Bulwer's Harold, James's Philip

Augustus, are all real contributions to our comprehension of the

men themselves, by calling the chronicles and memoirs into action.

True, the picture cannot be exact, and is sometimes distorted--nay,

sometimes praiseworthy efforts at correctness in the detail take

away whatever might have been lifelike in the outline. Yet,

acknowledging all this, I must still plead for the tales that

presumptuously deal with days gone by, as enabling the young to

realize history vividly--and, what is still more desirable,

requiring an effort of the mind which to read of modern days does

not.

The details of Millais' Inquisition or of his Huguenot may be

in error in spite of all his study and diligence, but they have

brought before us for ever the horrors of the auto-da-fe, and the

patient, steadfast heroism of the man who can smile aside his

wife's endeavour to make him tacitly betray his faith to save his

life. Surely it is well, by pen as by picture, to go back to the

past for figures that will stir the heart like these, even though

the details be as incorrect as those of the revolt of Liege or of

La Ferrette in 'Quentin Durward' and 'Anne of Geierstein.'




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